Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [30]
The purpose of Acts was not, in fact, to record the history of the early Church but to bridge the considerable gap between the gospels and the epistles. Like Matthew and John, it was also designed to empower the Roman hierarchy. As Waite says:
It is plain that the Acts of the Apostles was written in the interest of the Roman Catholic Church, and in support of the tradition that the Church of Rome was founded by the joint labors of Peter and Paul.4°
The author(s) of Acts used text from Josephus and, evidently, from the writings of Aristides, a Sophist of the latter part of the second century, to name a couple of its sources, which also purportedly included the life of Apollonius of Tyana, the quasimythical Cappadocian/ Samaritan/ Greek miracle-worker of the first century CE.
Bible Prophecy
Many people believe that the biblical tale of Jesus must be true because the Bible itself predicted his advent and because so many other Old Testament "prophecies" had come true, demonstrating that the book was indeed "God's word." First of all, much of the biblical "prophecy" was written after the fact, with merely an appearance of prophecy. Secondly, the book has served as a blueprint, such that rulers have deliberately followed to some degree its so-called prophecies, thus appearing to bring them to fulfillment. Thirdly, very few if any "prophecies," particularly of the supernatural kind, have indeed come true. Fourthly, biblical interpreters claim that records of events centuries in the past somehow refer to the future. As concerns purported prophetic references to Jesus in the OT, Wells says:
Nearly all New Testament authors twist and torture the most unhelpful Old Testament passages into prophecies concerning Christianity. Who, ignorant of Mt. 2:16-9, could suppose that Jeremiah 31:15 (Rachel weeping for her children) referred to Herod's slaughter of the Innocents?4'
To demonstrate that their Messiah was predicted, Christians have also grabbed onto the brief reference made at Psalms 2 to "the Lord and his Anointed," a word that in the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, the Septuagint, is "Christos." In fact, the Septuagint, allegedly translated and redacted during the second and third centuries BCE at Alexandria, Egypt, contains the word "Christos" at least 40 times.42 This title "Christos" or "anointed," however, referred only to an Israelite king or priest, not a superhuman savior. This Christian defense, in fact, proves that there were other Christs long before Jesus, including David, Zadok and Cyrus. The title "Christ" or "Anointed" ("Mashiah") was in reality held by all kings of Israel, as well as being "so commonly assumed by all sorts of impostors, conjurers, and pretenders to supernatural communications, that the very claim to it is in the gospel itself considered as an indication of imposture ..."a3
As to the reliability of both Old and New Testaments, Hilton Hotema declared, "Not one line of the Bible has a known author, and but few incidents of it are corroborated by other testimony."a+ Thus, Christianity is based upon a false proposition, and, without the inspired authorship of apostles under an infallible god, the Church is left with little upon which to base its claims. Regarding this state of affairs, Wheless declared:
The Gentile Church of Christ has therefore no divine sanction; was never contemplated nor created by Jesus Christ. The Christian Church is thus founded on a forgery of pretended words of the pretended Christ.-15
1. Taylor, 108.
2. Mead, GG, 59, 123.
3. Keeler, 101.
4. Eusebius, 258.
5. Wheless, FC, 91.
6. Dujardin, 33.
7. Wells, DJE, 3.
8. Wheless, FC, 231.
9. Waite, 32.
10. Wells, WWJ, 198.
11. Massey, HJMC, 161.
12.